I was jittery before I published Women and the Church yesterday. I was afraid that, since I mentioned the presence of homosexual priests in our Church, I would stir up a hornet’s nest of attacks on homosexual priests. Silly me. Women are sooo much more the object of discrimination than homosexuals. No group of people on this planet can outrank women on the hated scale. I was inundated with comments from men (While I know there are women-hating women and... Read more
The culture wars are fought with money and words rather than bullets. Perhaps the most damaging weapon is slander. Every public person I know has been slandered. By slander I mean the deliberate character assassination of a person to destroy their effectiveness as advocates for certain viewpoints such as pro life or favoring traditional marriage. Pope Francis was the object of slander in 2005 when his name first surfaced as a possible candidate for the papacy. The old rumors were... Read more
I love this photo. Why? Because it shows our new pope washing the feet of both women and men on Holy Thursday. Catholics of a certain stripe look for holiness in anything that diminishes women. Righteousness is wanting to do away with altar girls, ending the service of women readers and extraordinary eucharistic ministers. These same folk are adamant that only people with y chromosomes should have their feet washed by a priest on Holy Thursday. In each of these... Read more
I don’t have a lot to say about this for now — I’ll probably get around to saying quite a lot later — but I think it’s wonderful. I love our Pope! From Vatican Information Service: FRANCIS WILL SAY HOLY THURSDAY MASS IN A ROMAN PRISON Vatican City, 21 March 2013 (VIS) – On Holy Thursday, 28 March, the Holy Father Francis will celebrate the Chrism Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica in the morning and then, at 5:30pm in... Read more
Andreas, the Jesuit receptionist must have a short fuse. At least it appears he does considering his quick response to what he thought was a crank caller. It was an understandable mistake. After all, everybody knows that popes don’t dial their own phones. According to a Vatican official, “When the pope wants to call someone, an official usually calls a secretary who places the call.” That’s the way things have always been. Until now. Francis, the black-shoe-wearing-hotel-bill-paying Pope is also... Read more
It’s still Lent. We’ve got a week and a half of the deepest, darkest passage in human history to relive. Jesus arrested, betrayed, beaten, tortured, shamed and murdered; that’s what lies ahead of us in these next days. We are approaching the depths of Lent; the remembrance of humanity’s greatest crime against innocence in the flesh. And we are almost there. But how do you do lent in a time of feasting? Last week, the Papal Conclave elected the first... Read more
Maybe it’s my working-class, slum-school background. Maybe it’s long years of representing a district where, more times than not, I’m the only white person and the only college-educated person at the table. I dunno exactly what it is. But I am hooked on Pope Francis. Red shoes, black shoes, no shoes, it doesn’t matter a bit to me. He’s my pope. I love that he’s from this hemisphere. I love that he’s Argentinian. I love that he was so sick... Read more
My husband and I go to the Vigil Mass at our parish. Our pastor delivered a fine homily yesterday. It was based on the Gospel story of the woman taken in adultery. He made a point that I’ve often thought myself, that the woman in this story was set up. You catch someone in “the very act” of adultery by being there. This outrage of the scribes and pharisees, which included demands that a woman be stoned to death, was... Read more
But about that day and hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Jesus Christ Your personal end of time is coming right at you. Maybe that’s why people are so fascinated with any “end of time” prophecy they hear about. They know that their end of time will occur on that unknown but absolutely certain day when they die. They’d rather not have to face that day alone. They want... Read more
I don’t watch tv very often. Too busy. But when I do, I ignore the network channels altogether. The only exception is when we’re under a tornado alert. Then I watch Gary England on Channel 9 to learn which way to duck. Other than that, I spend most of my viewing time in the bigger numbers on the viewing chart, far away from the oddball take on the world that the network channels provide. But I do read about television... Read more
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